Academics have created typologies to divide association football (soccer) fans into categories based upon the assumed ‘authenticity’ of their fandom practices. One of the main requirements of ‘authentic’ fandom has been assumed to be match attendance. The goal of this paper was to critically assess this assumption through considering how fans themselves talk about the significance of match attendance as evidence of ‘authentic’ fandom. In light of the fact that the voices of English non-league fans on the ‘authenticity’ debate have so far been overshadowed by the overbearing focus of much previous research on the upper echelons of English soccer, an e-survey was conducted with 151 members of an online community of fans of English Northern League (NL) clubs (a semi-professional / amateur league based in North East England). Findings revealed that opinion was divided on the constituents of ‘authentic’ fandom and match attendance was not deemed to be the core evidence of support for a club by 42% of the sample. Elias (1978) suggested that dichotomous thinking hinders sociological understanding and it is concluded that fan typologies are not sufficient for assessing the ‘authenticity’ of fan activities.

Type:

Article

Language:

en

ISSN:

1466-0970; 1743-9590

Rights:

Following 18 month embargo author can archive post-print (ie final draft post-refereeing). For full details see http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo [Accessed: 25/03/2015]

Full metadata record

DC Field

Value

Language

dc.contributor.author

Gibbons, T. (Tom)

en

dc.contributor.author

Nuttall, D. (Daniel)

en

dc.date.accessioned

2015-03-25T15:03:54Z

en

dc.date.available

2015-03-25T15:03:54Z

en

dc.date.issued

2014-11-25

en

dc.identifier.citation

Soccer & Society; 1

en

dc.identifier.issn

1466-0970

en

dc.identifier.issn

1743-9590

en

dc.identifier.doi

10.1080/14660970.2014.980735

en

dc.identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10149/347129

en

dc.description.abstract

Academics have created typologies to divide association football (soccer) fans into categories based upon the assumed ‘authenticity’ of their fandom practices. One of the main requirements of ‘authentic’ fandom has been assumed to be match attendance. The goal of this paper was to critically assess this assumption through considering how fans themselves talk about the significance of match attendance as evidence of ‘authentic’ fandom. In light of the fact that the voices of English non-league fans on the ‘authenticity’ debate have so far been overshadowed by the overbearing focus of much previous research on the upper echelons of English soccer, an e-survey was conducted with 151 members of an online community of fans of English Northern League (NL) clubs (a semi-professional / amateur league based in North East England). Findings revealed that opinion was divided on the constituents of ‘authentic’ fandom and match attendance was not deemed to be the core evidence of support for a club by 42% of the sample. Elias (1978) suggested that dichotomous thinking hinders sociological understanding and it is concluded that fan typologies are not sufficient for assessing the ‘authenticity’ of fan activities.

en

dc.language.iso

en

en

dc.publisher

Taylor & Francis

en

dc.relation.url

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14660970.2014.980735

en

dc.rights

Following 18 month embargo author can archive post-print (ie final draft post-refereeing). For full details see http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo [Accessed: 25/03/2015]